Parental control time restriction for personal computers are provided through various means including Operating System (OS) settings, network router settings and Internet Service Provider (ISP) features. Maintaining parental controls on a personal computer of a tech-savvy teen can be difficult for many parents. A major limitation of network router settings and ISP features is that limits are only set for internet usage and these settings cannot prevent local use of the computer, including playing games or watching video content previously downloaded.
For most commercially available personal computer OS (i.e. Microsoft® Windows®), the Administrator user has privileges to install, remove or upgrade software. With full access to the OS, the Administrator may add, upgrade or change the operating system itself. The role of Administrator is often delegated to the most technical user of the system, which when this is a child, creates a problem for parents attempting to set usage limits. Even if not set as the Administrator, there are many methods of working around parental controls such as hacking the Administrator password or creating a new Administrator account (using easily found resources on the Internet) or simply tricking a parent into letting the child use the system while logged in as the Administrator. Determined tech-savvy users can also easily create an alternative partition on the hard drive (with an alternative OS without parental controls), boot another OS from a USB flash drive or, even as a last resort, reinstalling the OS or changing out the hard drive altogether.
With the increasing use of personal computers for schoolwork, many parents struggle to ensure their children are using the computer for school rather than playing games or watching videos. While some OS or application parental control features allow the ability to restrict certain applications or web sites, this can be easily bypassed in various ways. This then requires an ongoing, technically-difficult and time-consuming effort on the parent's part to maintain proper parental control settings.